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Steps

  1. Go to Settings → Search Behavior.
  2. Select language, out-of-stock product visibility, and image search preferences.
  3. Configure combined listing display, excluded tags, and other options as needed.
  4. Save changes and, if prompted, run a quick sync.

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Out-of-stock product visibility

Control how out-of-stock products or variants appear in search results. Select one of the following options:
  • Not at all — hides out-of-stock products entirely from search results.
  • At the end — shows out-of-stock products, but demotes them to the bottom of results.
  • Mixed with all other results — shows out-of-stock products alongside in-stock products with no rank penalty.
These settings apply to search results only. Browse (collection page) results are not affected by store-level out-of-stock visibility — the Shopify collection itself controls which products appear. To hide out-of-stock products on a per-request basis for browse, use the forceHideOutOfStock parameter in the Browse API. For blocks, use the Hide Out of Stock safeguard in the block configuration.

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Location-based stock check

When you select Not at all or At the end, a location picker appears below the stock display options. This lets you evaluate stock availability at specific Shopify locations rather than using global availability. The example below shows how to open Search Behavior and pick the inventory locations used for search stock checks. Animated example of choosing inventory locations for search behavior By default, Layers checks global availability across all locations. If you select one or more locations, the stock check only considers inventory at those locations:
  • With Not at all, products that have zero inventory at every selected location are hidden from results — even if they are technically available at other locations.
  • With At the end, products with no inventory at the selected locations are pushed to the bottom of results.
A product is considered in stock if it has inventory at any one of the selected locations. You do not need to have stock at all selected locations. To configure location-based stock checking:
  1. Go to Settings → Search Behavior.
  2. Under Stock Display, select Not at all or At the end.
  3. Click the location picker that appears below the stock options.
  4. Search for locations by name, city, country, or ID and select the ones you want to check against.
  5. Save your changes.
To revert to global availability, clear all selected locations. The picker shows All locations (default) when no locations are selected.
Only active Shopify locations appear in the picker. If you don’t see a location, verify that it is active in your Shopify admin.

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Combined listings display

If your store uses Shopify combined listings, you can control how parent and child products appear in search results:
  • Only show parent products — returns only the parent listing in results.
  • Only show child products — returns only the child products.
  • Show both (default) — returns both parent and child products.

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Image search configuration

The image embedding configuration controls which product images Layers uses to generate embeddings for visual search. By default, new stores use both the product featured image and variant featured images. You can change this in the image search preferences section of the search behavior settings. Available options:
  • Both (default) — uses the product featured image and all variant featured images for visual search matching.
  • Product featured image — uses only the main product image.
  • Variant featured images — uses only variant-specific images.
  • All — uses every image associated with the product and its variants.
You can also set a minimum image size (width x height in pixels) to exclude small or low-quality images from embedding generation.

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App sales channel

If your store has a mobile app (such as Tapcart, Fuego, or Canvas), you can specify which Shopify sales channel represents your app storefront. When configured, Layers uses this channel to determine which products are visible to app users — only products published to the selected channel appear in app search, browse, and block results. To configure the app sales channel:
  1. Go to Settings → Search Behavior.
  2. Scroll to the App Sales Channel card.
  3. Select your app’s sales channel from the dropdown. Layers loads all available channels from your Shopify store automatically.
  4. Save your changes.
To remove the configuration, select Not configured from the dropdown and save.
If no app sales channel is configured, app requests fall back to default channel filtering behavior. For more details on how channel visibility works, see Sales channel visibility.

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Search excluded tags

You can configure custom product tags that exclude products from the searchable database entirely. Products with any of these tags will not appear in search results. To add custom excluded tags:
  1. In the Search Excluded Tags section, enter a tag name in the input field.
  2. Click Add or press Enter to add the tag to the list.
  3. To remove a tag, click the X button next to it.
  4. Save your changes.
Note: Custom excluded tags are in addition to the default excluded tags (hide, layers-ignore). Tag matching is case-sensitive. Products with newly excluded tags won’t be removed from search until they’re re-indexed via webhook or bulk operation.

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Seeded search data

The Use Seeded Search Data toggle appears in the Advanced section of the search behavior settings. When enabled, Layers returns sample search results while your catalog is still empty or syncing. This ensures that customers see products in search results during initial setup rather than empty pages. Disable this toggle once your full catalog has finished syncing and products are indexed. To enable or disable seeded search data:
  1. Go to Settings → Search Behavior.
  2. Scroll to the Advanced card.
  3. Toggle Use Seeded Search Data on or off.
  4. Save your changes.

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Real-time query expansion (deprecated)

Real-time query expansion is deprecated and disabled by default for all stores. It will be removed in a future release. All stores should use pre-computed query expansions instead.
The search behavior settings include a Real-Time Query Expansion toggle. When enabled, the search engine generates query expansions on the fly using an LLM for each search request. When disabled (the default), Layers uses only pre-computed query expansions. Pre-computed expansions offer faster response times and more predictable behavior. If your store currently has real-time query expansion enabled, you should switch to pre-computed expansions by disabling this setting. To disable real-time query expansion:
  1. Go to Settings → Search Behavior.
  2. Find the Real-Time Query Expansion card.
  3. Click Disable to switch to pre-computed expansions only.
  4. Save your changes.
For more about how query expansion works, see Query Understanding.

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Tip

  • After changes, use Evaluate to test a few searches.